Over the past several years, the most talked-about trend in the global economy has been the so-called rise of the rest, which saw the economies of many developing countries swiftly converging with those of their more developed peers. The primary engines behind this phenomenon were the four major emerging-market countries, known as the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime shift, the argument went, in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing their counterparts in the developed world.

These forecasts typically took the developing world’s high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, juxtaposing them against predicted sluggish growth in the United States and other advanced industrial countries. Such exercises supposedly proved that, for example, China was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy-a point that Americans clearly took to heart, as over 50 percent of them, according to a Gallup poll conducted this year, said they think that China is already the world’s?“leading”?economy, even though the U.S. economy is still more than twice as large (and with a per capita income seven times as high).

As with previous straight-line projections of economic trends, however-such as forecasts in the 1980s that Japan would soon be number one economically-later returns are throwing cold water on the extravagant predictions. With the world economy heading for its worst year since 2009, Chinese growth is slowing sharply, from double digits down to seven percent or even less. And the rest of the BRICs are tumbling, too: since 2008, Brazil’s annual growth has dropped from 4.5 percent to two percent; Russia’s, from seven percent to 3.5 percent; and India’s, from nine percent to six percent.

None of this should be surprising, because it is hard to sustain rapid growth for more than a decade. The unusual circumstances of the last decade made it look easy: coming off the crisis-ridden 1990s and fueled by a global flood of easy money, the emerging markets took off in a mass upward swing that made virtually every economy a winner. By 2007, when only three countries in the world suffered negative growth, recessions had all but disappeared from the international scene. But now, there is a lot less foreign money flowing into emerging markets. The global economy is returning to its normal state of churn, with many laggards and just a few winners rising in unexpected places. The implications of this shift are striking, because economic momentum is power, and thus the flow of money to rising stars will reshape the global balance of power. (节选自Foreign Affairs 全文网址：http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138219/ruchir-sharma/broken-brics?page=show?)

参考译文：An American committee, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (UCESRC) issued a 156-page report Wednesday, which gives detailed descriptions of Chinese companies’ investments in the US. It claims the security and economic risks posed by China’s large-scale investments as a “potential Trojan horse,” which shocked us.

The US’ investment in China is of a much larger scale. Many companies have close ties with Washington. If we use the logic in the report, there are a great number of “Trojan horses” in China.??If so, Chinese people should be wary of these “Trojan horses,” as local governments in China are busy courting foreign investment.

China doesn’t have an organization like the UCESRC, which does nothing but destroy opportunities for mutual economic cooperation. Even if there was such a commission which issued a similar report, saying that Microsoft and IBM may overthrow China, those who wrote the report would be condemned.

The mentality with which China and the US see each other is changing. The Chinese, who have worried about US ambitions of subjugating China, have become positive, if not blindly so, while the Americans, who had no fear in the past, have become oversensitive, speculating as to the motives of Chinese companies.

We don’t know whether these concerns are genuine, or whether the accusations are just a disguise for trade protectionism.

Globalization has affected the international distribution of industries. The US, which used to be at the top of the chain, is gradually feeling a sense of crisis. Chinese companies, which used to help their Western counterparts lower costs and boost efficiency, began to compete with them in terms of technology and investment. They are considered to be taking away the very interests of the West and posing a threat to their core competitiveness.

Such a mentality is spreading throughout the West. China cannot make one-sided sacrifices to eliminate it. If these suspicions became actions, we would expect that the free trade environment would be affected. If the US wants to remain the world’s No.1, it can only rely on its real strength rather than opportunism.

On Wednesday, the US International Trade Commission decided to issue anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders against China’s photovoltaic industry. China will certainly respond. If the US is indeed in decline, then these two commissions are accomplices to this.

NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) – For America, 2012 will go down in history as the year of the Latinos, the blacks, the women and the gays. That rainbow coalition won President Barack Obama his second term. This triumph of the outsiders is partly due to America’s changing demographics. And it is not just the United States that is becoming more diverse. Canada is, too, 1. as is much of Europe.

That is why it is worth thinking hard about how to make 2. diverse teams effective, and how people 3. who straddle two cultural worlds can succeed. Three academics, appropriately enough a diverse group based in Asia and America, have been doing some provocative research 4. that suggests that our ability to comfortably integrate our different identities – or not – is the 5. key.

In “Connecting the Dots Within: Creative Performance and Identity Integration,” Chi-Ying Cheng of Singapore Management University, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and Fiona Lee, 6. also at the University of Michigan, argue that ethnic minorities and women in male-dominated professions 7. are most creative when they have found a way to believe that their “multiple and 8. conflicting social identities are compatible.”

“We tried to see how people who have to deal with 9. seemingly in-conflict culture or gender identities cope,” Cheng told me. Their 10. conclusion was that people who have found a way to reconcile their two identities – Asian-Americans, for 11. example, or women who work in male-dominated jobs like engineering – are the best 12. at finding creative solutions to problems.

“Those who see their identities as 13. compatible, they are better at combining ideas from the two identities to come up with something new,” Cheng said. “14. While those who also share these two social identities, 15. but see them as being in conflict, they cannot come up with new ideas.”

Cheng, Sanchez-Burks and Lee devised a research strategy to probe this issue that you do not need a Ph.D. to appreciate: They asked Asian-Americans to invent new fusion cuisine dishes using both typically Asian and typically American ingredients, and they asked female engineers to design products geared specifically to women. In both cases, people who were at peace with their dual identities performed better.” Asian-Americans who had higher bicultural integration could create more creative recipes, and they believed it was possible to come up with more recipes,” Cheng said. “By contrast, Asian-Americans who feel their two identities are in conflict cannot come up with as many creative recipes.”

Cheng has her own experience of being a minority. She is from Taiwan but went to graduate school in the United States; she is a woman but has taught in the male-dominated environment of graduate business schools. She does not minimize the challenge of coming to terms with this sort of diversity.

“People who have high identity integration, it is not that they are more easygoing. It is that they find peace between the two different worlds,” Cheng said. “It is not that easy.

Pretending doesn’t work. There has to be real understanding and integration between the two worlds. They find a way for the two worlds to coexist inside a person.”

This academic work is a useful prism for understanding the man who may be the world’s most prominent integrator of two potentially conflicting identities: President Obama. He has gained admission to what used to be the most exclusive white club of all, the White House, while remaining patently at ease with his black identity.

As Cheng advises, Obama does not ignore the complexities of straddling these two worlds: He governs with an acute awareness of the particular challenges a black skin poses for the man Americans still like to describe as the leader of the free world. But the president is also deeply at ease with his various identities, a psychological state that may help him use them to powerful effect – as in the election campaign, when he rallied pretty much all Americans who think of themselves as different.

The conclusions of Cheng, Sanchez-Burks and Lee suggest a tantalizing follow-up question: How can we achieve the personal integration these scholars have identified as crucial to making a virtue of diversity? Further research by Cheng offers one answer: “You can integrate your identities if you have positive bicultural experiences. The macrosystem can influence the microsystem.”

In other words, if the world around us tells us our dual identities are compatible, we will believe that, and act accordingly. If female engineers work in a company that treats their gender as a virtue, they will do better. If Asian-Americans live in a community that celebrates both aspects of their identity, they will be more effective.

America’s rainbow coalition won at the ballot box this month, but in other settings the nation has become a little weary of diversity-cheering movements like multiculturalism and even explicit feminism. Cheng’s work suggests that cynicism may be misplaced. Diversity can work, but we have to work at it.

II. Reading the passage and answer following questions. (30’)

1. According to the author, how can a minority person succeed in the U.S.? (6’)